And the waters prevailed so mightily: so mightily renders an adverb made up of the doubling of a word, “greatly greatly.” For a similar repetition of sounds forming descriptive modifiers in some languages, see comments on “without form and void” in 1.2.

All the high mountains under the whole heaven has caused interpreters to argue whether or not the flood is described as being universal or local, a point that cannot be settled from these narrative reports. The expression under the whole heaven, like “upon the earth,” is frequently redundant and so is not always translated; note Good News Translation, “It became so deep it covered the highest mountains.”

High mountains: in some parts of the world a slight increase in elevation may be considered a hill or a mountain with respect to the surrounding flat landscape. In other areas a ten thousand foot rise would be too low to be called more than a “hill.” There are also many languages that have only one term for “hill” or “mountain.” Therefore it may be necessary in some areas to speak of “the highest hills” or “the highest places on the earth” and add a note giving the elevations of some of these.

Quoted with permission from Reyburn, William D. and Fry, Euan McG. A Handbook on Genesis. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1997. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .